


Moment

by LadyYateXel



Series: Deep Dish Nine [8]
Category: Deep Dish Nine - Fandom, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 20:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5941768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyYateXel/pseuds/LadyYateXel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julian watches Elim make a grocery list.  </p><p>---</p><p>Part of the Deep Dish Nine Pizza Shop-based AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Something else that's not in order. Maybe one day AO3 will let me arrange these as they happen instead of as I decide to post them. 
> 
> I remember having a moments like this for a variety of people and relationships. I hope this rings true for other people.

The day he realized he loved Elim, nothing happened. There wasn't an elaborate show of affection, there were no bouquets of flowers, there were no poems or songs.

 

There was just a grocery list.

 

Julian would have liked to have a real story to tell, something dramatic and powerful that he could use to show Miles further proof that Garak was a good idea. But this was so small, so confined to tiny flickers of the everyday, that it sounded ridiculous to recall it against the backdrop of Quark's or a video game. Seeing something profound in bits of dust, or facial muscles, or in wearing a pair of socks is the sort of thing that goes in a poem, not something that falls out because there's no room for it among all the beer and pizza rolls.

 

Julian sat on a stool, sock feet twisted round its legs. He stretched him arms over the kitchen counter while Elim stood on the other side, scribbling tiny blocky letters on a long slip of paper and frowning between it and the cabinet to his left. Not outright or exaggerated frowning, but a Garak Frown, which resembled a totally neutral expression to everyone but Julian.

 

Elim twisted his lips, slightly more recognizable as a frown, and his forehead wrinkled a bit as he concentrated on the list. “I can't remember what I used the last time...”

 

He wasn't talking to Julian, and that was wonderful. When they'd first started all this, Elim had been unable to sleep with Julian in the apartment, and even when he managed it he'd rocket from the bed at the slightest sound, on his feet and armed with the small knife from the bedside table in seconds. The first time Julian used his key for Elim's apartment, he found Elim playing that he'd absolutely meant to be white-knuckle gripping a rolling pin in the living room.

 

And now Elim had grown so comfortable with Julian there, draped over his furniture, that he muttered to himself.

 

“What is it?” Julian asked only to watch Elim's expression change.

 

It was a charming flicker of a dozen things all at once. Realization that Julian was there, realization that he had forgotten that Julian was there, low-level horror of a few blurry flavors, disappointment, relief, and then, finally, the only expression he really meant to convey: a warm pleasant smile.

 

“Oh, nothing.”

 

Julian shrugged. He settled his head on one shoulder as he let his arms extend over the full width of the counter, gripping the other side with his fingertips. He looked up at Elim to see his head mostly obscured by the yellowish light from the kitchen ceiling. Elim returned to writing his list, and Julian to doing nothing but trying to grip the stool with his toes.

 

“Do you need more of that Ferengi drink?”

 

“Oh, the Slug-O? Yeah.”

 

Elim smiled faintly, and just as barely shook his head, as he added another blocky scribble to the list.

 

And then he turned his head to look again into the open cupboards and Julian saw him from this strange angle below his ear. The light now haloed his head, lit up his skin tone, slid like water on his tiny pair of glasses, and sparkled through the ends of shiny black hair. Objectively, it probably wasn't the most flattering angle. Elim would have grumbled about his chin or his neck, and he'd always been very clear about his dislike of his 'work' glasses.

 

But here the kitchen light illuminates hairs out of place, the shift of neck muscles as Elim talks to himself about peanut butter and vegetables, the bright outlining of eyelashes, and an unevenly draped cardigan exposing just the spot where Julian's knuckles fell every time they greeted each other.

 

'I love him' appeared in Julian's mind as though someone had just rung a bell. Like so much of Elim, it came in layers, but still all at once. Pleasant and bright like the kitchen light, it settled into Julian's skin, prickled his muscles, and washed across bone until he began to laugh into his arm.

 

“What's so funny?”

 

Elim hated Slug-O Cola, prided himself on his attention to detail and control, feared revealing any weaknesses, and rarely offered anyone a smile that was not carefully calculated and manufactured. And yet he'd conceded all of these things to Julian in the span of a few moments, and in the same way that he could speak paragraphs without a word: by turning his head.

 

“You.”

 

 

 

\---

 


End file.
